tag:theconversation.com,2011:/global/topics/digital-arts-24357/articles
Digital arts – The Conversation
2017-10-18T10:42:17Z
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/85227
2017-10-18T10:42:17Z
2017-10-18T10:42:17Z
Japan’s new digital age brings together the old and the new
<p>Popular fascination with Japan often begins with a vision of a country existing between two realms. On the one hand, we have the traditional “old world” of temples, tea ceremonies and calligraphic cherry blossoms. On the other hand, there shines a futuristic “new” world of bullet trains, <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H--iR2KGq_o">AI dogs</a> and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/travel/2012/feb/01/top-10-video-games-shops-tokyo">funky gaming consoles</a>. </p>
<p>Mixing this together into one addictive, fun-house concoction for the West has been Japanese pop culture in the shape of <a href="https://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2070.html">manga/anime</a>, games like <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-pokemon-go-craze-sees-gamers-hit-the-streets-but-it-comes-with-a-warning-62278">Pokemon Go!</a>, film and even snack foods (<a href="http://metro.co.uk/2015/02/20/omfg-you-can-buy-these-japanese-kitkats-here-in-the-uk-5071802/">maccha KitKat, anyone?</a>). </p>
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<p>Whether it is <a href="https://scontent-amt2-1.cdninstagram.com/t51.2885-15/e35/19379283_1112124565598533_7598214892323078144_n.jpg">futuristic mecha-bots</a> stomping on the ancient slopes of Mount Fuji or J-Pop stars shimmering like plastic dolls in silk kimonos, we indulge in the guilty (or not-so-guilty) consumption of Japan like electronic sushi: something traditional repackaged within the innovative, creating that perfect old/new bite.</p>
<p>But what do we really know about Japan today beyond <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/29761389/kawaii-culture-in-the-uk-japans-trend-for-cute">kawaii</a> (cuteness), ninjas and that mysterious savoury taste sensation <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/wordofmouth/2013/apr/09/umami-fifth-taste">umami</a>? </p>
<h2>Inhabiting 2D and 3D worlds</h2>
<p>In the true Japanese style that loves being “in-between” (old/new, East/West, salty/sweet), <a href="https://www.j25musical.jp/en/">2.5 Dimensional Theatre</a> is a digital-technological art form that exists between the worlds of 2D and 3D. Initially, a fan-based phenomenon, it has become an established industry and institution in its own right within the last decade. 2.5 Dimension productions bring to life the 2D world of manga, anime and video-games on a 3D stage using the latest digital technologies and communications platforms.</p>
<p>The use of social networking sites, smartphones and other technologies such as <a href="https://pro.sony.com/bbsccms/assets/files/mkt/digicinema/brochures/EntAccessGlasses-DI-0272_2.pdf">subtitle glasses</a> (spectacles that project subtitles for the individual user) enrich the audience experience by increasing participation and interaction that goes beyond the stage. Emerging from a country with a longstanding history of artistic stage productions – from noh and bunraku to kabuki – 2.5 Dimensional Theatre is a perfect example of various Japanese creative industries, old and new, coming together through the digital to create entirely new experiences.</p>
<p>Such digital phenomena point towards society’s increasing need to inhabit an augmented reality. Products and services encourage users to constantly seek ways to make realities more real through digital technologies. Digitising ourselves is now the norm (as we see when people generate bio-data through fitbits) and our lives are frequently personalised mini-2.5 Dimensional stages. </p>
<p>For example, helping users to create their own “in-between” reality is the Ricoh THETA SC, a virtual camera that takes 360 degree images. At the end of this month, a <a href="http://miku.ricoh/en/">limited edition “Hatsune Miku” type</a> will be released: users can now “exist” alongside the popular virtual singer in any environment of their choice.</p>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Make a virtual singer, Hatsune Miku, part of your ‘real’ life!</span></figcaption>
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<h2>Robots and digital currency</h2>
<p>Shinzo Abe, the Japanese prime minister, has been investing a significant amount of resources “to make robots <a href="https://www.roboticsbusinessreview.com/manufacturing/tokyo_olympics_abenomics_and_robot_automation/">a major pillar of our economic growth strategy</a>”, in time to showcase during the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/tokyo-olympics-2020/index.html">Tokyo 2020 Olympics</a>. Hailed as the <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/stephenharner/2013/09/10/the-2020-olympics-a-fourth-arrow-for-abenomics-and-second-term-for-abe/#2adf0d0b1157">“fourth arrow” of Abenomics</a>, Tokyo 2020 seems to have indeed provided a governmental incentive to boost Japanese “soft” power (who can forget <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2016/08/22/super-abe-was-a-taste-of-tokyos-2020-olympic-campaign.html">Abe as Super Mario</a> during the Olympic closing ceremony in Rio 2016?) and strengthen the country’s position as a global force. Here again, the digital hails the way. </p>
<p>Japanese banks have announced plans <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/ca0b3892-a201-11e7-9e4f-7f5e6a7c98a2">to introduce digital currency</a>. Their aim is to have the J Coin in full circulation in Japan by 2020 – part of making <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2017/09/tokyo-global-financial-center-under-the-spotlight-again/">Tokyo a financial centre once again</a>. </p>
<p>Similarly, one of the biggest sponsors for Tokyo 2020, Toyota, is working <a href="https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/toyota-self-driving-cars-2020-olympics/">on self-driving cars</a> to be used near the sporting venues during the Olympics. The Japanese government is also mapping the country’s road network to provide a digital infrastructure.</p>
<p>Despite all the hi-tech, it is also intriguing how certain major digital platforms like Uber and AirBnB are actually <a href="http://www.triplepundit.com/2017/02/uber-airbnb-struggle-in-tokyo/">failing in Japan</a> for legal, social and cultural reasons. In many ways, this highlights the pressure Japan faces in maintaining the Western and self-projected image of a country in between worlds. Wrapped in its own contradictory tensions, is it possible for Japan to be both old and new at the same time?</p>
<p>Japan may well be at the forefront of a kind of digital revolution. But if any of these innovations go global they will still bear the stamp of that inherent Japanese character that makes the country so unique.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85227/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Esperanza Miyake receives funding from Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation for the one-day symposium, 'Japan in the Digital Age', to be held at Manchester Metropolitan University on 28th October. </span></em></p>
How culture can inform technological innovations.
Esperanza Miyake, Lecturer - Department of Languages, Information and Communications, Manchester Metropolitan University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/79300
2017-07-24T10:34:22Z
2017-07-24T10:34:22Z
How activist artists on the US-Mexico border contest Donald Trump’s wall
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/177839/original/file-20170712-15626-7213fy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/diversey/15999598736/in/photolist-qnQ8hC-6XBaka-Sf8jgM-rvvoND-9115k-A8YBz-SFv2BY-zaMPxn-smRSkj-dFuWcC-4jBM1r-KUB4C-UbLULY-qZ2XEu-x3wns-gGm532-6iJWCW-voAWL-ps3npo-pGswgr-GGZ67-q5YhqX-faDX44-tWDkW-cWKkYu-gGkqHW-7ag5eW-tWDbu-35rCyQ-fDycrJ-2JQzLf-qoNTs9-qoNQaN-79WrQP-brJ62m-78ohfv-58gNQ-fzRNew-6SLiQm-7biuYV-aft764-qr5XLV-5bi8JQ-gGm3gr-7bntEw-6ZrG1Y-5MY3iq-9AbVek-4MxL5f-8vvE48">diversey/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In recent years we have seen a rise of what has been termed “artivism”: the bringing together of art and activism. Artivists see art as a social practice. They address particular societal concerns or inequalities and involve communities and activists, as well as other artists. For many of these artivists, new media technologies have provided particularly fruitful ways to engage in this. Different groups and collectives are variously promoting “<a href="http://geertlovink.org/texts/tactical-media-the-second-decade/">tactical media</a>”, “<a href="http://critical-art.net/siteapps/WordPress-49402/htdocs/books/ecd/">electronic civil disobedience</a>”, and “<a href="http://www.thing.net/%7Erdom/ucsd/3somesPlus/hacktivismcyberwars.pdf">hactivism</a>” as ways of employing digital technologies in order to make creative, artistic protests.</p>
<p>Some particularly interesting examples of these types of conjunctions of art, activism, and new media, have focused on the US-Mexico border region, a space which has come under increased scrutiny in recent months, particularly in the light of Trump’s infamous plans to build a wall between Mexico and the US. </p>
<p>As part of my ongoing research on digital art and activism in Latin America, I’ve looked at artists whose work has focused on the US-Mexico border. Some of the features that they highlight in their work make clear that the situation is a lot more complex than the “them/us” rhetoric that Trump uses – a rhetoric that it is extremely important to overcome. These artists make work that attempts to express a non-nation state identity and provide a critique of the late capitalist conditions of the border economy.</p>
<h2>Activist art</h2>
<p>There have been many festivals and interventions on the border, including the <a href="http://borderhack.org/">Borderhack</a> festivals that began in 2000, which aim to protest “the inequalities and dangerous conditions” that Mexican immigrants face. There is also the <a href="https://www.marktribe.net/tijuana-calling/">Tijuana Calling</a> online exhibition, which makes use of new media technologies to explore the concerns of the border, and to investigate the ways in which technologies – often put to use to police these very borders – may be re-encoded in a resistant fashion.</p>
<p>One such work is “<em>Turista Fronterizo</em>”, made in collaboration between Cuban-American performance and multimedia artist Coco Fusco and media hactivist Ricardo Domínguez. Turista Fronterizo takes the format of an electronic board game, loosely similar to the Monopoly format, but with the properties spaced along the San Diego-Tijuana border.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176036/original/file-20170628-5101-1h8gn09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176036/original/file-20170628-5101-1h8gn09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176036/original/file-20170628-5101-1h8gn09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176036/original/file-20170628-5101-1h8gn09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176036/original/file-20170628-5101-1h8gn09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176036/original/file-20170628-5101-1h8gn09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176036/original/file-20170628-5101-1h8gn09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176036/original/file-20170628-5101-1h8gn09.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Turista Fronterizo (2005), Coco Fusco and Ricardo Domínguez.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image reproduced courtesy of Coco Fusco.</span></span>
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<p>When we play the game – which can be done <a href="https://www.thing.net/%7Ecocofusco/StartPage.html">online</a> – by moving our avatar to a new square, a short animation appears in the centre of the board commenting on the socio-political realities associated with each particular location. These avatars frequently make reference to real-life controversies, disputes and human rights abuses that have taken place within the border region. This is a work that encourages us to critique the structural inequalities of the border economy, and to take an active, critical position.</p>
<p>Another example is the work of Latino artist Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga. His recent project, A Geography of Being (2012), is an interactive installation consisting of a video game along with sculptures that contain electronic circuits that react to the game. Far from drawing the user into a purely ludic, pleasurable world, this game encourages them to reflect on social issues. It narrates the experiences of undocumented young immigrants in the US – young people who enter the US in search of better life opportunities. The game positions the player in the role of an undocumented youth who needs to negotiate the virtual world and learn about the hardships that such young people face.</p>
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<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176037/original/file-20170628-7303-dnua2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176037/original/file-20170628-7303-dnua2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176037/original/file-20170628-7303-dnua2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176037/original/file-20170628-7303-dnua2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176037/original/file-20170628-7303-dnua2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=480&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176037/original/file-20170628-7303-dnua2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176037/original/file-20170628-7303-dnua2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176037/original/file-20170628-7303-dnua2f.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=603&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">A Geography of Being (2012), Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image reproduced courtesy of Ricardo Miranda Zúñiga</span></span>
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<p>Perhaps one of the most high-profile examples of the creative use of digital technologies to contest dominant neoliberal logic and enable cross-border identities is the <a href="https://post.thing.net/node/1642">Transborder Immigrant Tool</a> (2010). This is a mobile phone app that uses GPS to aid undocumented migrants to find sources of water when crossing the US-Mexico border, as well as showing the location of the nearest US Border Patrol stations and other landmarks on both sides of the border. Installed onto recycled mobile phones, and distributed free to migrants, the tool <a href="https://doi.org/10.1068/d10110">has been dubbed</a> a “virtual divining rod”. As well as providing practical support, the tool raises important issues about inequalities and access in the border region.</p>
<p>These artists often present the US-Mexico border as a continuous space. They emphasise that the US-Mexico border has a complex – if fraught – shared history, that doesn’t fit neatly into national borders.</p>
<h2>Protest politics</h2>
<p>Perhaps the most important role of these artists and activists is the way they often protest against the sorts of neoliberal policies imposed on the border region by the US. </p>
<p>It’s widely accepted that <a href="http://www.naftanow.org/">NAFTA</a>, the North American Free Trade Agreement has ensured the US access to an abundant supply of cheap labour south of the border. NAFTA has long been the subject of criticism by Mexican activists for its <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/215532529_Fifteen_Years_of_NAFTA_The_Impact_on_Rural_Mexico">devastation of the traditional Mexican rural economy</a>. </p>
<p>Indeed, the reality of the border is that the US economy relies on a disavowed underclass of cheap Mexican labour. This labour comes from the same US policies, enacted through NAFTA, which drove Mexican peasants from their land, and created a disposed class who were forced to look for work in the <em>maquiladoras</em> – factories run by a foreign company exporting its products – so common on the border. The rhetoric of President Donald Trump, in which Mexicans (them) are coming to steal our jobs (us) is therefore much more complex than it appears.</p>
<p>In these ways, artists – both those living in the border regions and elsewhere – have been engaging creatively with border experiences for years. Their works provide a nuanced and complex take on what it is like to live in the border region, and encourage viewers to take a critical stance as regards the inequalities faced by many living there. </p>
<p>Perhaps the greatest indicator of the importance of their work is the reactions that they have generated. In 2010 for instance, three Republican congressmen called for an investigation of the Transborder Immigrant Tool, and Ricardo Domínguez was <a href="http://www.furtherfield.org/features/global-positioning-interview-ricardo-dominguez">threatened with loss of tenure</a> from University of California San Diego. Fortunately, Dóminguez remained in post, and his work, and that of other artivists, continues.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/79300/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Claire Taylor has received grants from the AHRC and the ESRC.</span></em></p>
Activist art makes clear that the border dynamic is a lot more complex than Trumps’s ‘them/us’ rhetoric.
Claire Taylor, Professor in Hispanic Studies, University of Liverpool
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/80208
2017-06-28T11:55:48Z
2017-06-28T11:55:48Z
The iPhone at ten: mobile devices have opened a new era of tech storytelling
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176009/original/file-20170628-7339-123fvr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=731%2C5%2C2274%2C1482&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">DisobeyArt / Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>There are now <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/there-are-officially-more-mobile-devices-than-people-in-the-world-9780518.html">more mobile devices than people</a> on the planet. You only have to glance around on trains, in the street, or in cafes to see how increasingly lost we are in screen time. We don’t just hold our phones, we cradle them. </p>
<p>It is ten years since the iPhone’s release to the general public. And so now seems a perfect time to reconsider our love of technology.</p>
<p>I’m fascinated by our relationship with mobile phones, both past and present. Nokia has recently released <a href="https://theconversation.com/nokias-revised-3310-mobile-phone-is-the-latest-tech-to-target-retro-adopters-72270?sr=2">a new version of the classic Nokia 3310</a>. Originally launched in 2000, it was the company’s most successful phone, selling over <a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/article/nokia-3310-review-2017-specs-uk-release-date">126 million units</a>. This technology nostalgia speaks of simpler times when a phone was a phone, not a computer; when we weren’t tethered to our workplace. A time when we met the gaze of others rather than the ever constant glow of our interactive screens. </p>
<p>Our phones track, trace and archive our lives almost seamlessly. We’re leaving increasingly complex trails of messages, updates and other bits of our life stories online. We have access to a seemingly infinite archive of our emotional pasts. </p>
<p>As <a href="https://theconversation.com/im-moving-to-spain-now-online-memoirs-are-being-created-from-life-defining-texts-25063?sr=1">I’ve written previously</a>, this is something that I am particularly aware of. One morning I found an old Nokia at the back of a kitchen drawer, and scrolling through its inbox I realised I’d unwittingly archived a three-year text message dialogue between my son’s father and me: a relationship that unfolded in just 100 texts and told the story of how we met, dated for just a few months, broke up and subsequently dealt with an unplanned pregnancy. His last and final text message read: “I’m Moving to Spain.”</p>
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<p>I recently bought this story to life in <a href="https://vimeo.com/189536800">160 Characters</a>, a smartphone short I filmed and directed for <a href="http://filmlondon.org.uk/160-characters">Film London</a>. It is currently <a href="https://www.picturehouses.com/cinema/Crouch_End_Picturehouse/film/docheads-the-past-in-the-present">playing at Picturehouse Cinemas</a> across London. The film explores the consequences of our access to our past. It aims to capture the challenges and limitations of early digital dialogues, to explore the space between words, the pauses, the moments in which I struggled to compress big emotions into what was then a 160 character message limit.</p>
<p>My own text message thread was just 100 texts, sent over three years. Now, my teenage niece can send 100 texts before lunchtime, on a phone that enables her to share these dialogues with the rest of the world. And so I decided to use my iPhone as a tool to explore the present as well as the past. I shot all the contemporary sequences on my iPhone 6, filming at the London locations where I sent or received the original text thread. Stories and relationships that were originally mediated through mobile phones were bought to life using the latest in smartphone production techniques.</p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176012/original/file-20170628-7313-adtdz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/176012/original/file-20170628-7313-adtdz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176012/original/file-20170628-7313-adtdz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176012/original/file-20170628-7313-adtdz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=338&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176012/original/file-20170628-7313-adtdz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176012/original/file-20170628-7313-adtdz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/176012/original/file-20170628-7313-adtdz4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Big question from 160 Characters.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Victoria Mapplebeck</span></span>
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<p>The digital traces we leave behind us create a wealth of data about our lives, an ever evolving archive which creates a map of where we’ve been and where we’re going. Over the last decade many directors and artists have attempted to capture the emotional subtext of mobile phone dialogues, to convert the vernacular of digital dialogues and interactive screens into great drama. When writing a screenplay, once hidden text messages can reveal the secret lives of the central characters.</p>
<p>This has resulted in an evolving genre of films, TV and artworks which reflect our ever changing relationship to technology. The BBC series <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-secret-to-sherlocks-success-at-the-emmys-30947">Sherlock</a> and Charlie Brooker’s <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2085059/">Black Mirror</a> are just two obvious examples of the ways in which cinema and TV have been influenced by the aesthetics and affordances of mobile media. The other night I enjoyed two such dramas back to back: BBC drama documentary <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08w29jm">Theresa vs Boris: How May became PM</a> and Channel 4’s <a href="http://www.channel4.com/programmes/ackley-bridge">Ackley Bridge</a>, which both featured text dialogues between the central characters. </p>
<p>There are also some interesting and experimental shorts that have evolved from this genre, such as Patrick Cederberg and Walter Woodman’s <a href="https://vimeo.com/65935223">Noah</a> or Trim Lamda’s <a href="https://www.shortoftheweek.com/2017/02/11/cracked-screen-snapchat-story/">Cracked Screen: A Snapchat Story</a></p>
<figure>
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/65935223" width="500" height="281" frameborder="0" webkitallowfullscreen="" mozallowfullscreen="" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Our mobile phone has become like a time machine: it connects us with our past, our present and our future. The past is always with us, in the phones we cradle. The digital traces we leave behind us create a wealth of data about our lives, an archive of stories which artists and filmmakers will continue to capture and preserve. </p>
<p>We’re at the dawn of a new genre of technological storytelling which will continue to explore how we can collect, curate and share stories from our digital past. As technology continues to evolve, so too will representations of the increasingly complex ways in which emotions and technology converge.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/80208/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Victoria Mapplebeck received funding from Film London.</span></em></p>
We don’t just hold our phones, we cradle them – and make films like this one with them.
Victoria Mapplebeck, Reader in Digital Arts, Royal Holloway University of London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53526
2016-02-01T13:00:22Z
2016-02-01T13:00:22Z
Why we need to remember how to forget
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109486/original/image-20160128-3058-1ui954z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Three US neuroscientists published a <a href="http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/13554790500473680">case study</a> in 2005 detailing how a woman, AJ, was plagued by memories of her own life and of public events such as the dates of death of Elvis and Princess Diana. The discussion of AJ’s memory never mentions it, but it seemed clear to me that her overactive remembering was structured like our digital biographies – personal “moments”, as Twitter like to call them, tagged to Wikipedia facts. The researchers named this case “hyperthymestic syndrome”, from the Greek <em>thymesis</em>, remembering.</p>
<p>AJ’s situation may indeed be remarkable, but it’s clear that we all live in this age of hyperthymesis. Memory has become prosthetic – outsourced to the internet, to external hard drive or cloud storage system. What should we remember? What should be preserved? The paradox of the digital future is the burden of the past that we are constantly archiving.</p>
<p>Theatre offers a particularly pressing case study. Because theatre is a live medium – subject to the vagaries and imperfections of the moment – it is perhaps the art most similar to life. Therefore its particular attitude to archiving and to memory has wider implications. <a href="http://artsdigitalrnd.org.uk">Industry statistics</a> show the increasing importance to theatres of digitally preserving and archiving live content. Some 78% of theatres digitally preserve and archive their productions by capturing their live productions and make them available online. </p>
<p>In this archival process, the word “live” is under some pressure. “Live” streaming of theatrical events into cinemas is morphing towards designing productions specifically for the camera rather than the theatre audience; routine “encore” showings now make clear that those formerly “live” events are in fact recorded; DVD productions advertised as “recorded live” bring out the paradox. “Recorded live” might summarise human existence in the digital age. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109490/original/image-20160128-3039-1mknepc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109490/original/image-20160128-3039-1mknepc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109490/original/image-20160128-3039-1mknepc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109490/original/image-20160128-3039-1mknepc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=526&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109490/original/image-20160128-3039-1mknepc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109490/original/image-20160128-3039-1mknepc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109490/original/image-20160128-3039-1mknepc.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=661&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Not quite the same on screen.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Padmayogini / Shutterstock.com</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Looking over a similar revolution in representational technologies, Walter Benjamin observed that “even the most perfect reproduction of a work of art is lacking in one element: its presence in time and space, its unique existence at the place where it happens to be”. Perhaps theatre is the art form that has most retained what Benjamin calls “aura” – that unique existence within time and space – but the implications of “recorded live” make clear how much that is changing. The availability of recorded theatre online has increased substantially over the past 18 months: it won’t be long before almost all theatre productions are available online. </p>
<p>Writing about a similar process in the area of pop music, Simon Reynolds suggests in his book <a href="http://retromaniabysimonreynolds.blogspot.co.uk">Retromania</a> that contemporary music is clogged up with retromania, the endlessly easy online availability of its past. In his words, “history must have a dustbin, or history will be a dustbin, a gigantic, sprawling garbage heap”. So much of our discussion about the future potential of the digital sphere is how it will better enable us to preserve the past. The paradox is clear: the defining characteristic of being human in the digital age is that of being overwhelmed by the past – and the threat to our creative present and future is that the past becomes too omnipresent for us to move forward. Enter the creative potential of forgetting. </p>
<p>The so-called right to be forgotten is usually discussed as part of the rights of the rehabilitation of offenders. But what I want to suggest here is that the right to be digitally forgotten should be extended. Rather than always looking to record and archive we might want to reinstate the idea that being “live” demands impermanence, ephemerality and forgetting. The best theatrical experiences are the ones we have half-forgotten, where the subjective highlights have crystallised in inauthentic and highly personal tableaux of remembrance. Forgetting – or half-remembering – is the way we collude with art to make it our own. We construct our own “highlights package” that is unique to our own often faulty memories of an experience.</p>
<p>Changes in expectations of the theatrical medium are symptoms of a wider phenomenon: the deadening hand of recording everything for posterity. We don’t have time to watch all this stuff now, so why should the future? It’s not only those things we regret that might have the right to be forgotten. My academic work is on Shakespeare – perhaps it’s because we have allowed ourselves to forget how Shakespeare’s plays looked in the 16th century that we are still able to perform them 400 years later. </p>
<p>Remembering, not forgetting, is the enemy of creative reinvention. Not everything that is live should be recorded.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53526/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Emma Smith has held a Knowledge Exchange Fellowship, funded by the University of Oxford, with the Royal Shakespeare Company. </span></em></p>
Memory has become prosthetic – outsourced to the internet. But remembering, not forgetting, is the enemy of creative reinvention.
Emma Smith, Professor of Shakespeare Studies, University of Oxford
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53894
2016-01-29T14:14:04Z
2016-01-29T14:14:04Z
When the internet got nasty: art on the electronic superhighway
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109659/original/image-20160129-3883-ys29km.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Aristarkh Chernyshev, Loading, 2007.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Whitechapel Gallery</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>How has the internet changed art? It is this ambitious question that an exhibition enticingly named <a href="http://www.whitechapelgallery.org/about/press/electronic-superhighway/">Electronic Superhighway (2016-1966)</a> at the Whitechapel Gallery in London sets out to answer. </p>
<p>The exhibition takes you through a reverse chronology of major digital and internet-themed artworks. We begin in the present before being transported along a helter-skelter tour into the past, all the way back to 1967 when Bell Laboratory began sponsoring <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/learn/online-resources/glossary/e/experiments-in-art-and-technology">collaborations between artists and technologists</a>. These collaborations coincided with the birth of the internet. In 1968 the first packet switching network, ARPANET, went online, and formed the technological foundation of the modern internet. </p>
<p>The show is remarkable in its breadth. Its historical journey encourages reflection on the rapidly accelerating development of our information-heavy society and its social, economic and political consequences. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109658/original/image-20160129-3883-1hms4ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109658/original/image-20160129-3883-1hms4ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109658/original/image-20160129-3883-1hms4ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109658/original/image-20160129-3883-1hms4ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=600&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109658/original/image-20160129-3883-1hms4ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109658/original/image-20160129-3883-1hms4ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109658/original/image-20160129-3883-1hms4ph.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=754&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Amalia Ulman, Excellences & Perfections (Instagram Update, 18th June 2014), 2015.</span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The exhibition begins with the most banal of images: a blown up picture of a female bottom with SMS bubbles streaming out of it. Olaf Breuning’s <em>Text Butt</em> is quite literally talking out of its arse, perhaps a cheeky riposte to the art critics assembled before it. It’s also an immediate reminder that though the culture of the internet is increasingly celebrated as art, most of it remains trivial. </p>
<p>Banality is a running theme through many of the contemporary pieces in the opening section of the exhibition – James Bridle’s airport-style hologram, <em>Homo Sacer</em>, for example, drones out the securocratic bromides of the national security state. Of course, this also begins to suggest a darker side to the mundaneness of our technological age. </p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109655/original/image-20160129-3876-ar22e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109655/original/image-20160129-3876-ar22e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109655/original/image-20160129-3876-ar22e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109655/original/image-20160129-3876-ar22e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=799&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109655/original/image-20160129-3876-ar22e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109655/original/image-20160129-3876-ar22e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109655/original/image-20160129-3876-ar22e6.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1004&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Douglas Coupland, Deep Face, 2015.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Whitechapel Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Douglas Coupland, renowned author of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2009/sep/11/book-club-generation-x-douglas-coupland">Generation X</a>, and Trevor Paglen, famed for his long-exposure <a href="https://theintercept.com/2014/02/10/new-photos-of-nsa-and-others/">photographs</a> of NSA facilities, develop that darker side still further with ruminations on the corporate and state surveillance of the internet. <em>Deep Face</em>, Coupland’s series of portraits with the faces blocked out by Mondrian-like abstractions, are a protest (we are told) against Facebook’s development of facial recognition software. Paglen highlights both the problem of, and solution to, state surveillance. His map of NSA-tapped undersea internet cables hangs behind his Autonomy Cube, a working Wi-Fi hotspot that routes all traffic through the anonymous Tor network.</p>
<p>As you make your way back in time through the exhibition it is striking how the paranoia and banality inspired by the internet of today contrasts with the early optimism that initially greeted it. This retrospective view encourages reflection upon the broken promises and lost opportunities for social and political change that the early Utopian impulse of an interconnected world conveyed. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109654/original/image-20160129-3888-ylmi25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109654/original/image-20160129-3888-ylmi25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109654/original/image-20160129-3888-ylmi25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109654/original/image-20160129-3888-ylmi25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=445&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109654/original/image-20160129-3888-ylmi25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109654/original/image-20160129-3888-ylmi25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109654/original/image-20160129-3888-ylmi25.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=559&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nam June Paik, Internet Dream, 1994.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Whitechapel Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The fulcrum of the exhibit sets two works against each other to bring this home. The technological sublime of Nam June Paik’s 1994 video installation <em>Internet Dream</em> contrasts sharply with the voyeuristic, even pornographic resonances of Jill Magid’s <em>Surveillance Shoe</em> (2000). Though only six years apart, an epoch divides them. The former was created amid the boom years of the world wide web’s still nascent emergence. The latter was produced during the bursting of the dot-com bubble that coincided with the early development of many of the tools (such as <a href="http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/u-s-never-really-ended-creepy-total-information-awareness-program/">Total Information Awareness</a>) that laid the foundations of the 21st-century surveillance state – a period and a subject dealt with masterfully by Thomas Pynchon in his <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/books/2013/sep/28/bleeding-edge-thomas-pynchon-review">latest novel</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-left ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109657/original/image-20160129-3898-idtkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109657/original/image-20160129-3898-idtkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109657/original/image-20160129-3898-idtkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109657/original/image-20160129-3898-idtkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=802&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109657/original/image-20160129-3898-idtkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109657/original/image-20160129-3898-idtkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109657/original/image-20160129-3898-idtkyd.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1008&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Frieder Nake, Walk-Through-Raster Vancouver Version, 1972.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Whitechapel Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Walk past Magid’s shoe and we’re back to the future of the internet’s innocent first decades. The final few rooms conjure the sense of discovery and possibility that the early internet rendered. Abstract experiments in technique and form by Tony Longson and Frieder Nake, among others, are indicative of that sense of possibility that came with the emergence of an entirely new medium. </p>
<p>One of the final exhibits is a poster of the 1968 <a href="http://cyberneticserendipity.net/">Cybernetic Serendipity exhibition</a>. Its slogans promise “happy chance discoveries” generated by the meeting of human and machine in an “exhibition demonstrating how man can use the computer and new technology to extend the scope of his creativity and inventiveness”. Despite its techno-futuristic design, its cheerful language and unfettered optimism about computational technology betray it as an ancient relic of a bygone age when sexting, <a href="https://theconversation.com/ashley-madison-breach-reveals-the-rise-of-the-moralist-hacker-44996">Ashley Madison hacks</a>, “<a href="http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/24/gchq-tempora-101">Tempora</a>” mass surveillance programmes and all the detritus of our digital age were not foreseen. </p>
<p>Turn around and walk back through the exhibition – returning progressively to the present – and you experience the rapid evaporation of that “cybernetic meadow” <a href="http://allpoetry.com/All-Watched-Over-By-Machines-Of-Loving-Grace">described</a> by Richard Brautigan in 1967: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>where mammals and computers<br>
live together in mutually<br>
programming harmony<br>
like pure water<br>
touching clear sky.</p>
</blockquote>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109656/original/image-20160129-3910-12dpbax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109656/original/image-20160129-3910-12dpbax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109656/original/image-20160129-3910-12dpbax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109656/original/image-20160129-3910-12dpbax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=589&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109656/original/image-20160129-3910-12dpbax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109656/original/image-20160129-3910-12dpbax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109656/original/image-20160129-3910-12dpbax.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=740&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Addie Wagenknecht, Asymetric Love, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Whitechapel Gallery</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Leaving the exhibition I looked up and noticed Addie Wagenknecht’s steel chandelier of CCTV cameras watching over us, which I’d missed on the way in. And then just outside the gallery, on the short walk back to Aldgate tube station, I spotted a configuration of cameras as elaborate and evocative as any of the artworks I’d just seen. Only I wasn’t in the safe space of an art gallery anymore, I was back on the streets of one of the <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1533054/Britain-the-most-spied-on-nation-in-the-world.html">most surveilled cities on the planet</a>. </p>
<p>How has the internet changed art? Perhaps it would be more accurate to say that the internet has changed us – our lives, relationships, careers, governments, morals, language, communities – and art has changed with them.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53894/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Simon Willmetts receives funding from the UK Economics and Social Sciences Research Council (ESRC). To read more about the ESRC project he is involved with, which focusses on the ethics and rights of cybersecurity, visit the project website here: <a href="http://cgercs.wix.com/ercs">http://cgercs.wix.com/ercs</a></span></em></p>
Time travelling back into internet art of the past, the contrast between today’s paranoia and banality and the early optimism that initially greeted it is striking.
Simon Willmetts, Lecturer in American Studies, University of Hull
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/52464
2016-01-28T12:05:06Z
2016-01-28T12:05:06Z
Click here for art
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109270/original/image-20160126-20387-50xfgx.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shutterstock.com</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>To many, museums are like dinosaurs: fossilised. They call to mind Renaissance paintings, Roman sculpture, “don’t touch!” admonishments, and Indiana Jones demanding “it belongs in a museum!” But these associations won’t be true for much longer. While there will always be a Louvre and a National Portrait Gallery, today there are many more types of museum exhibits and art, thanks to the constant evolution of technology and computing. </p>
<p>The new age of digital art doesn’t even restrict itself to museum spaces; interactive and digital works are spreading out into online galleries, public places, and real-time performances. They can even invite you into the artwork itself, asking you to wander through it, to roll your hands over it, to touch, to play, and even to make the art yourself.</p>
<h2>Art in the museum</h2>
<p>Museums have always been spaces that embrace the fresh and the experimental, the avant garde of art and culture. So it’s no surprise that digital and multi-media art (in the sense of film, text, image, sound, and texture) have found homes in exhibits and installations all over the world. Notable examples include the <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/content/videos/d/video-decode-digital-design-sensations/">V&A’s Decode: Digital Design</a> exhibit in 2009-2010, which featured digital interactive pieces that were collaborations between designers and users. These works asked – even required – the museum visitor to touch, poke, prod, move through, peer into, and play in order to garner a response from the technology.</p>
<figure>
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<p>Other artworks use their museum space to immerse the interactive audience deeply into a <a href="http://wallpaper.dreamingmethods.com/">narrative</a>, a <a href="http://www.aether-hemera.com/Work/Detail/Pollinators">cause</a>, or physical experiences (such as the <a href="http://www.scenocosme.com/souffles_e.htm">visitor’s own breathing</a>). These works invite their visitors to play, to physically interact with the digital technologies, and to cooperate in creating the final realisations of the pieces.</p>
<p>Some ventures outside the hallowed museum halls, turning public spaces into interactive art displays. The <a href="http://www.artnews.com/2012/10/16/ben-rubin-shakespeare-machine/">Shakespeare Machine</a>, for example, reshuffles the bard’s lines in an algorithmic <a href="https://vimeo.com/55963191">display</a> in New York’s Public Theater, immersing the audience in Shakespeare’s poetic language in the lobby while actors do the same next door. <a href="http://thecreatorsproject.vice.com/en_uk/tag/interactive+installation">Interactive installations</a> of this sort are emerging all over the world in <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/page/l/the-london-design-festival-at-the-v-and-a/">festivals</a>, <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/about/projects/ik-prize">prizes</a>, and <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-york-north-yorkshire-34984885">fairs</a>. They play with LEDs, speakers, conductivity, input, output, motherboards, algorithms, robots, and the viewers of the works themselves.</p>
<h2>Art online</h2>
<p>Even Indiana Jones’s brand of art is going digital, as curators seek to preserve, catalogue, and archive their collections using new technologies. In the UK, the <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/research/publications/tate-papers/19/tate-digital-strategy-2013-15-digital-as-a-dimension-of-everything">Tate’s digital strategy</a> includes an outline for creating digital versions of its collections. The aim is to take the physical museum to the realm of the virtual. Online communities such as <a href="http://secondlife.com/destinations/arts">Second Life</a> and <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/about/projects/tate-worlds-art-reimagined-minecraft">Minecraft</a> are also delivering digital art, through virtual exhibits, online archives, and original digital pieces in virtual spaces.</p>
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<p>Online platforms also provide opportunities for artists, curators and art lovers to interact and collaborate. The wildly successful <a href="http://tagger.thepcf.org.uk/">Your Paintings Tagger</a> uses site visitors – the public in general – to catalogue and crowdsource metadata for 200,000 publicly owned oil paintings, an enormous task made easy and educational via digital interfaces. Other projects, such as <a href="http://www.tate.org.uk/about/projects/wondermind">Wondermind</a>, <a href="http://inanimatealice.com/">Inanimate Alice</a>, and the National Gallery of Art’s <a href="http://www.nga.gov/content/ngaweb/education/kids.html">NGAkids</a>, seek to engage and educate through multimedia tasks in art, games, and video, whether in museums, classrooms, or on a home computer.</p>
<h2>Mobile art</h2>
<p>The mobile aspects of digital media are also moving art outside of museums and into public spaces via mobile devices and public displays. Art installations live inside our mobile phones and our daily environment, combining into “geo-locative” art, stories and histories. There’s Joel Cahen’s soundwalk narrative <a href="https://joelcahen.wordpress.com/installations/interzone-theatre-geo-locative-sound-walks/">The Oneironaut</a> for example, and Rebecca Horrox’s Snowdonia opera walk, <a href="http://lahorrox.com/soundworks/teffradot-opera-walk/">Teffradot</a>. These works make use of your mobile devices in the actual physical location, enhancing the visitor’s experience of the geographical space with multimedia.</p>
<p>Mobile apps, <a href="http://www.thirdwoman.com/">QR-codes</a>, <a href="http://www.projectionartworks.com/work">projected artwork</a> on buildings and in public spaces, embedded <a href="http://we-make-money-not-art.com/rfid_workshop_at_imal_in/">RFIDs</a>, <a href="http://betakit.com/disrupting-art-with-wearable-technology/">wearable tech art</a>, and <a href="http://richardwilhelmer.com/projects/fuhl-o-meter">public installations</a> that turn ubiquitous surveillance into real-time displays all bring art into the 21st century, into our hands, and into our everyday environments. Banksy’s <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jan/25/banksy-refugee-protest-political-street-art-stik-stewy">latest piece</a>, for example, features a QR code that takes the viewer to a video of teargas being used in a raid on the Calais refugee camps. Mobile phones are making art part of our lives, rather than a brief Saturday outing for the express purpose of “culture”.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109496/original/image-20160128-3046-1rwvtr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109496/original/image-20160128-3046-1rwvtr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109496/original/image-20160128-3046-1rwvtr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109496/original/image-20160128-3046-1rwvtr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109496/original/image-20160128-3046-1rwvtr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109496/original/image-20160128-3046-1rwvtr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109496/original/image-20160128-3046-1rwvtr9.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A new artwork by Banksy, depicting the girl from Les Miserables affected by tear gas, opposite the French embassy in London.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Yui Mok/PA Wire</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Creating digital art</h2>
<p>And phones can take this one step further, transforming the art consumer and participant into artists themselves. The combination of a general frustration with rampant consumerism, poor quality consumer products, and the availability of raw materials on the cheap – from projectors to robotics to computing components – has ushered in the current “maker” culture. </p>
<p>Using inexpensive, open source tools that allow anyone to build small computer interfaces, such as the <a href="https://www.arduino.cc/">Arduino</a> and <a href="https://www.raspberrypi.org/">Raspberry Pi</a> systems, <a href="http://www.creativebloq.com/computer-arts/interactive-design-arduino-8127908">anyone can become</a> a “physical computing artist”. The internet is full of <a href="http://arduinoarts.com/tag/tutorial-2/">tutorials</a>, <a href="https://vimeo.com/groups/arduinoart">projects</a> and <a href="http://arduinoarts.com/2014/05/9-amazing-projects-where-arduino-art-meet/">examples</a>.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109264/original/image-20160126-19637-1y5lae3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109264/original/image-20160126-19637-1y5lae3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109264/original/image-20160126-19637-1y5lae3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109264/original/image-20160126-19637-1y5lae3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=451&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109264/original/image-20160126-19637-1y5lae3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109264/original/image-20160126-19637-1y5lae3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109264/original/image-20160126-19637-1y5lae3.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Glowing silk screen steaks, governed by an Arduino board.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.flickr.com/photos/bekathwia/297908095/in/photolist-sjRGt-3EAgU2-by4KN-7Zzrcc-adQqaY-fa7aQD-aCTkn4-5vhJcc-eRBNH-3kCyDK-dumdLx-drpMiz-adQqb3-euAT7A-aLebFB-5EC27P-fa7aLT-3Lf1Fr-4RspWS-5MteZi-HczTQ-aqzAxZ-9zADJH-8hQcFC-5b1qa2-5Zcr1h-a5yLTf-e3MTdX-f3qTCx-aZkZfv-5SFA5U-5DqQn8-7CjHqD-hXzQ4X-aZhtH8-7qrKSa-79uCSg-79ymo7-8hQcM1-8hLXBM-8hQcHo-aCX4pj-4PXBXR-fqLG7X-8hLXCn-azDEM3-6gYhJm-9UTBCj-aPzD9-AFmkw">bekathwia/flickr</a>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>No one is on their own in trying to play with these new arts tools; museums such as the Tate and the V&A hold regular digital <a href="http://www.vam.ac.uk/whatson/event/4874/digital-futures-868697657/">workshops</a> and <a href="http://museummaking.com/post/97592623345/whats-so-special-about-maker-spaces-anyway">maker sessions</a>, often free or low-cost, to patrons. Self-made works can be posted online, featured in online galleries, and linked through virtual spaces. The line between artist and visitor is blurred in the myriad interchanges and interactivities between the work, the sourcing of the work’s data and algorithms, and the patron’s input into the work of others as well as their own creations.</p>
<p>What is yet to come in the open creative spaces of museums? Certainly the digital festivals and “hack sessions” will continue, and ramp up as experimentation with digital tools and physical computing gains more and more traction. Expect more digital homes, virtual worlds, and public spaces transformed into art installations. Expect the walls separating museums, art, and artists from the everyday world to break open.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/52464/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Lyle Skains receives funding from the AHRC's Reading Digital Fiction project.</span></em></p>
That traditional monolith of culture, the museum, has begun to embrace the digital world. As a series of projects reveal, the possibilities are endless.
Lyle Skains, Lecturer in Writing, Bangor University
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/53525
2016-01-27T12:19:01Z
2016-01-27T12:19:01Z
How your smartphone is changing cinema
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109216/original/image-20160126-19649-oy5b0s.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Starvecrow</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Smartphone technologies are increasingly playing a major part in film production, distribution and reception. This month sees the launch of what is being <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mRZB9ufahQ">billed</a> as the “<a href="http://www.starvecrow.com/">world’s first selfie movie</a>”. And next a <a href="http://www.shield5.com/">series</a> is to air on Instagram. Last year, Tangerine became the first film shot on an iPhone to feature at the <a href="https://theconversation.com/tangerine-the-film-that-takes-trans-issues-mainstream-on-an-iphone-50427">Sundance film festival</a>. </p>
<p>The first known film shot entirely on an iPhone was <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1817229/">Night Fishing</a> (2011). The director attached a 35mm lens to the iPhone’s camera in order to achieve a cinematic look. Night Fishing draws on the framing and grammar of traditional film, eschewing the characteristics traditionally associated with portable recording such as unstable imagery, shaky camera moves, distorted audio, and sickness-invoking motion.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109217/original/image-20160126-19651-1gnjy4l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109217/original/image-20160126-19651-1gnjy4l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109217/original/image-20160126-19651-1gnjy4l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109217/original/image-20160126-19651-1gnjy4l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109217/original/image-20160126-19651-1gnjy4l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109217/original/image-20160126-19651-1gnjy4l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109217/original/image-20160126-19651-1gnjy4l.JPG?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The iPhone mounted onset of Night Fishing, 2011.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of Moho Film</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>More recently, <a href="https://theconversation.com/tangerine-the-film-that-takes-trans-issues-mainstream-on-an-iphone-50427">Tangerine</a> presented a blend of traditional codes and conventions associated with cinematic storytelling (such as cross-cutting and using an <a href="https://vimeo.com/77109842">anamorphic adapter</a> to achieve a wide screen) with newer mobile-specific features (such as continual takes, long tracking shots, and hand-held fluid camera work). The result is an absorbing on-screen intimacy with the characters, and a unique screen aesthetic – a hybrid of old and new methods of cinematic storytelling.</p>
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<h2>New modes of viewing</h2>
<p><a href="http://ragethemovie.com">Rage</a> (2009) was the first feature film to be designed for mobile phone viewing, and one which embedded the mobile phone symbiotically into the processes of production, distribution and consumption. Although the film itself was shot using a conventional video camera held by the director, it clearly considers the mobile phone in its creation: each of the protagonists addresses a fictional camera operator who is filming each of their private exchanges using his mobile phone. Rage was distributed simultaneously as a theatrical release and as a downloadable film via <a href="http://www.babelgum.com/">Babelgum</a> (for free) to be watched on a mobile phone.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109219/original/image-20160126-19660-np4qte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109219/original/image-20160126-19660-np4qte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109219/original/image-20160126-19660-np4qte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109219/original/image-20160126-19660-np4qte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=399&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109219/original/image-20160126-19660-np4qte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109219/original/image-20160126-19660-np4qte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109219/original/image-20160126-19660-np4qte.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=501&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Silver Goat premiere, 2012.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Sam Pearce</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>The launch of the iPad in April 2010 opened up further possibilities for cinematic-style storytelling. <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1872206/">The Silver Goat</a> (2012) was the first feature film to be created exclusively for the iPad, the first to be released as an app in the UK and several other countries, and the first in the world to have an iPad-only premiere. This took place on a London Route Master bus which traversed many of the film’s locations throughout the city while the audience members watched the film on their individual iPads.</p>
<figure class="align-right ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109218/original/image-20160126-20387-yso5or.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/109218/original/image-20160126-20387-yso5or.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109218/original/image-20160126-20387-yso5or.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109218/original/image-20160126-20387-yso5or.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=570&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109218/original/image-20160126-20387-yso5or.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109218/original/image-20160126-20387-yso5or.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/109218/original/image-20160126-20387-yso5or.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=716&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">APP, 2013.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">© Raymond van der Bas</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Then there’s the film <a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2536436/?ref_=fn_al_tt_1">APP</a> (2013), for which audiences were required to download the accompanying app – Iris - prior to entering the cinema and then encouraged to interact with it in the auditorium. A horror film in which an app takes over the main protagonists (and the audiences phones) – alludes to the consequences of our new reliance on smartphone devices and its subversion of our privacy. </p>
<p>APP exemplifies how new mobile cinema forms – through choice of story, subject matter and style – can explore the impact of computer mediated communications on our everyday life. This is also a recent topic of documentary cinema in Werner Herzog’s soon to be released <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXyjgeM6CEQ">Lo and Behold: Reveries of the Connected World</a>.</p>
<h2>New ways of filmmaking</h2>
<p>The consequences of mobile technologies on our everyday lives is most explicitly explored in the newly released <a href="http://www.starvecrow.com/">#Starvecrow</a>, the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mRZB9ufahQ">“world’s first selfie movie”</a>. The film is a blend of improvised footage, shot entirely on the actors mobile devices, with characters turning their cameras on themselves and each other. Blurring reality with fiction, the improvised material is cut with found footage from the actors’ own mobile phone film libraries and personal home video archives culminating in over 70 hours of footage.</p>
<p>This material was then mined and assembled, and further semi-scripted scenes were shot to create multi-streamed narratives in an 85-minute feature film. This style, coupled with the challenging themes of the film, makes for an uncomfortable viewing experience, and is an unapologetic social comment on the darker side of the mass-uptake of new technologies – the pervasiveness of self documentation, self-surveillance, narcissism and social voyeurism.</p>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/uV4iBy3MMu8?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
</figure>
<p>Today, the ubiquity of the smartphone means that a generation’s behaviour is being recorded and made publicly available on social media for future audiences. Through these social media channels - lives are now characterised, shaped, and sometimes ruined by naive behaviour and past misdemeanours - the implications of which we, as a society, are yet to fully comprehend.</p>
<p>As with all emergent media forms, the content and themes reflect and exemplify the tools of their making - ultimately creating new ways of storytelling, new modes of production and new types of audience engagement. As such, these pioneering and visionary examples of smartphone films will undoubtedly take their place as significant innovations in the history of cinema.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/53525/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sarah Atkinson receives funding from the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC). </span></em></p>
This year has already seen the first selfie movie, the first series to air on Instagram – mobile phones are increasingly playing a major role in the film world.
Sarah Atkinson, Senior Lecturer in Digital Cultures, King's College London
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.
tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/41933
2015-06-30T15:51:18Z
2015-06-30T15:51:18Z
An introduction to the booming world of Latin American digital arts
<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86300/original/image-20150624-31507-7fofr3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Monika Bravo, detail of the installation [URUMU](https://vimeo.com/86606440).</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Photo © Juan Luque </span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The idea of “digital arts” may not immediately call Latin America to mind. Silicon Valley maybe, Old Street roundabout maybe; probably not Buenos Aires. But this is exactly where the most recent E-Poetry Festival, “renowned biennial international artistic gathering”, took place earlier this month. I attended, and the gallery space on the opening night was positively buzzing with internet artists, digital performance artists and sound, video and <a href="http://code-poems.com/">code poets</a>.</p>
<p>This is the first time the festival has been held in Latin America in its 14-year history – previous events have been held in the US, the UK, Spain and France. The choice to celebrate the event in the region is therefore significant. It’s indicative of a growing recognition of the important place of Latin American digital arts at international level and a nod to the longstanding Latin American representation in the festival, wherever it’s been held.</p>
<h2>Digital arts</h2>
<p>But first off, what are “digital arts”? </p>
<p>Broadly, they are any art form imaginable that can be adapted to digital formats. People are used to the fact that films are routinely made with digital technologies these days, but poetry can also be transformed with new technologies. It’s not just a case of “digitising” old poems so that they can be read online. Instead poems are being “born digital”: they can only be read via an interactive interface, clicking on links to find your way through. Some are “generative”, taking data from various sources available online and mixing it together in endless permutations. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/86390/original/image-20150625-13008-19jki4h.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Orquesta de Poetas performing at the E-poetry festival.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Image courtesy of the Universidad Nacional Tres de Febrero</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>Internet art (or net art for short) and electronic literature work with a similar premise: you need to appreciate them via a computer rather than just “print them out”. Typically, contemporary digital art works display a high degree of hybridisation between art forms – poetry, visual art and performance can all be mixed in together. There’s also a tendency to play with the analogue and the digital, producing “multi-media” art installations and evolving works that move back and forth between old and new technologies at different stages in their “lives”.</p>
<p>Latin America might have found itself on the dark side of the “digital divide” over the past 20 years or so, but this really hasn’t impeded the development of digital arts in the region.</p>
<h2>Latin American culture</h2>
<p>The Latin American digital arts scene is really just the most recent manifestation of a strong avant-garde artistic and literary tradition in the region that goes back at least a century. This avant-garde movement has always been strongly international. Latin American contributions to Cubism, Surrealism and other manifestations of the European avant-garde have long been appreciated. The work of South American artists Wifredo Lam, Xul Solar or Joaquín García Torres is very much a part of it.</p>
<p>So it comes as no surprise to find one of the most significant contemporary Latin American digital artists, the Uruguayan <a href="http://netart.org.uy/">Brian Mackern</a>, reworking García Torres’s iconic <a href="http://www.wordsinspace.net/urban-media-archaeology/2011-fall/2011/11/30/inverted-map-of-south-america/">inverted map</a> of South America in his <a href="http://netart.org.uy/latino/index.html">Netart Latino Database</a>. He, like Torres before him, challenges us to turn our preconceptions of the region on their heads. This includes preconceptions which might suppose the region more suited to naive and low-tech forms of art.</p>
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<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Brian Mackern’s Netart Latino Database.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">netart.org.uy</span></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Revolution and its dangers</h2>
<p>Another preconception that quickly surfaces in the context of discussions of Latin American digital arts is the longstanding association of the region with all things revolutionary. Of course there is a relationship between some digital artworks produced by Latin Americans and proposals for social change, but just not in such a blanket fashion. </p>
<p>Latin Americans led the way in using the internet to initiate and sustain social protest: the Mexican <a href="https://www.vice.com/en_uk/video/the-zapatista-uprising-20-years-later">Zapatista Uprising</a> of 1994 was the first “revolution” to organise itself both on and offline. Given its success in “going viral”, it has been a source of inspiration for many other subsequent social movements. </p>
<p>Key in the online activism associated with the Zapatistas were some inspirational hactivist attacks on major institutions organised by Mexican-American artist <a href="http://visarts.ucsd.edu/faculty/ricardo-dominguez">Ricardo Domínguez</a> and colleagues at the <a href="http://www.thing.net/%7Erdom/ecd/EDTECD.html">Electronic Disturbance Theatre</a>. This kind of activism has also developed to become a form of art most often known as tactical media.</p>
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<span class="caption">Electronic Disturbance Theatre’s Transborder Immigrant Tool.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stalbaum</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/">CC BY-SA</a></span>
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<p>Some tactical media artists creatively subvert common forms of media such as adverts or commercial websites. An example of this is Peruvian-American artist and filmmaker Alex Rivera’s spoof labour-outsourcing website <a href="http://www.cybracero.com/">Cybracero.com</a>. </p>
<p>Alternatively, they may offer subversive applications of common technologies, such as Domínguez and colleagues’ <a href="http://bang.transreal.org/transborder-immigrant-tool/">Transborder Immigrant Tool</a>. This is an app for mobile phones that helps indicate water sources to illegal immigrants crossing from Mexico to the US; this comes with poetry to help the traveller along their way.</p>
<p>Despite these examples, there’s a fuzzy logic in operation when foreign commentators attempt to “sell” the region and its digital arts by loosely linking the “revolution” in new media technologies with revolutionary political projects. The result is that the writings or art works in question are assumed to be “doubly revolutionary” regardless of their political colours, or even artistic merits.</p>
<p>Today’s Latin American digital arts scene embraces all sorts of different projects. Some works are intentionally highly political, others try to break new ground in terms of aesthetics or the way they use technology. </p>
<p>I’m not going to claim that there’s a revolution going on, but there’s definitely a sense that digital arts are booming across the whole region. And because so much of this work is available via the internet, Latin American digital arts are not so easily cast as something a bit unusual that happens “down there”, reflecting a world very different from our own. Instead, they are very much a part of the world we live in too.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/41933/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Thea Pitman does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>
Latin America might have found itself on the dark side of the “digital divide” over the last 20 years or so, but this hasn’t impeded the development of digital arts there.
Thea Pitman, Senior Lecturer in Latin American Studies, University of Leeds
Licensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.